“Ah Facebook, you never know what’s coming next! Facebook continues to change their newsfeed algorithm, making it increasingly difficult for brands to reach their fans through organic posts, forcing marketers to rethink their approach to social media. With many of the new Facebook updates and focus on user privacy and preference, organic reach continues to fall short. If you are a large brand only 2-8% of fans actually see your posts and only .073% of brands’ fans actually interact with these posts! Facebook says that these changes are in the interest of keeping users happy, but at the same time, Facebook’s ad revenue continues to climb — are paid ads a marketer’s only hope?”

“Take a look at our infographic as we explore the relationship between Facebook and brands. Is it the end of the Facebook free-for-all? And if so, what can we as marketers do about it?”

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15 Replies to “Marketers Need to Know: Is This End of the Facebook Free-For-All for Brands?”

I think the brand should focus on creating interesting posts relevant their products to make more people forward and then let more and more people start to concern about the brands. Because from the survey ,we can see that promotion through the friends is more effective.

When I log onto Facebook, it’s for the purpose of uploading photos or briefly checking what my friends are up to. It also gives me important information about on campus activities. I don’t want to be blasted by promotional ads on my Newsfeed. I scroll over them anyway so I’m glad that these ads are starting to be weeded out and are being viewed less and less thanks to user privacies.

Currently, the social media websites are so hot that many companies just follow this wind and don’t have many strategic plan to use it intelligently. In my mind, most of them only focus on this form of social media and think that they will be successful if they use that, However consumers would not read your post when facing so much information to be chosen, if your post is mere a advertising and not useful to them. Thus, companies should have strategic plan for social media and pay more attention to the contents posted that are more entertainment, educational and useful. Increasing the rate of reading by consumers just could help companies build brand image.

I do not think so. Ads revenues always play an important role in the social media marketing. Even though most of customers are not interact with big brands by Facebook now, they still do it because they can click the coupons or give their reviews after they see the ads, which TV ads can not do it. Nowadays most of customers still spend more time on TV advertisements and hard to change. I think Facebook is changing the way to show ads in front of customers. We will see.

This article was very insightful about how Facebook makes money off of advertisers. Since Facebook changed their algorithms companies brands have a harder time advertising their products. This is difficult for larger companies since only 2-8% people see their ads and even more difficult for smaller companies where even fewer people see their ads. The solution to this problem is for companies to advertise on Instagram. Instagram is free and more people are starting to use it and Facebook is slowly dying because less people are using it. On Instagram more people are likely to see the posts because if their friends like the post they can see it and it would be on the popular page of their Instagram. Younger people tend to use Instagram more frequently so it is a smart idea if a brand is aimed towards twenty year olds/teens that they will get more views and likes rather than if they were to advertise on Facebook. Personally, I never go on my Facebook and mainly use Instagram as well as my friends. Because of that I think it is a better and cheaper idea for brands to use Instagram rather than Facebook for advertising.

Since facebook is a free site to sign up for, the company has to make money some how, and this is one of the ways they do so. Since Facebook is such a worldwide used site, marketers are constantly trying to put ads to attract facebook users to their products. Many people however don’t even view or see most of these ads. I personally know that when I’m Facebook I rarely pay attention to the ads.

It’s interesting that Facebook is finally listening to what people are saying about privacy. I know that recently, many people have been having issues with how Facebook can use information about things that you look at on the internet and tailor ads specifically for things that you’d like. That’s great for the advertisers, but Facebook users felt that this was a violation of their privacy. I guess Facebook is deciding that keeping users happy is more important than keeping advertisers happy.

Facebook is a great platform for advertisement, but I would have to agree that Instagram marketing is more effective, there are more people on Instagram than Facebook so I would try to market there. Although I still use Facebook I dont use it as often because of the bombardment in advertisement in a non pleasant way in my opinion. I also agree that email marketing has to be the most annoying type of marketing when you are checking your phone constantly for emails and it is a great way to get to everyone even when they are at work. In sum, I would argue that Instagram outweighs Facebook for marketers but other people have their own opinions.

Facebook is a great place to advertise but, many people do not like ads. I think that are two sides, the business side and the consumer side. The consumer side is that many people do not like to open these ads or even look at them. They are more of a bother then they are worth. But on the business side (Facebook’s side) since it is free to sign up they need to make money somehow. Think about it, how can businesses survive with no source of income? As someone who uses Facebook I would not want to go off and look at an add. I go to Facebook to do the following: put up picture, talk to friends and family, see whats going on… etc. So for Facebook to have ads is dependent on which side you are talking to. Personally, I do not like Ads. But, I am glad to hear that the ads are being slowly removed from Facebook.

wow this is very interesting. I had never thought that Facebook would restrict large companies from mass market advertising on facebook. I guess facebook wants a piece of that cake. It must have been really easy for these big companies to just click and have an advertisement sent to all their millions of fans on Facebook. To be honest it was only a matter of time that Facebook was going to catch on that they could capitalize on this. What do you expect?

In terms of a user and how I react to this approach by Facebook, I am more than satisfied by the way Facebook handles privacy, especially in an age where privacy concerns are a growing issue in the global market. Facebook is a pro profit company, and the fact that they are curtailing promoters in favor of paid ads makes sense from a business standpoint as the space the marketers are marketing their products/services on is still subject to the rules set up by Facebook. If Facebook so wishes, I have no objection to Facebook using monetary ads to decide who gets the lion’s share of the viewership. This is purely speaking from a theoretical perspective. In reality, I fear it may leave only the marketers with the most financial capital (cash), all jockeying for the best ad spots.

I tried once to do a “boost” (ad) on my FB page for my website here http://mynameisjamie.net, and at fb it is facebook.com/jamielifeinprison. So decided to test it and see if it brought more readers to that page, so I paid – luckily not too much, to test my main page for one month. It was working pretty well. I know that often times other readers determine if a page has value by looking at the number of *likes it has. I didn’t want to just rely on my “friends” to like the page and never go back. Halfway through the month, fb pulled ad, and kept my money. I don’t know anything except there was a line that was said to look “suspicious” What the heck does that mean? I have written. I have tried everything they said to do. This was months ago. I noticed yesterday the ban was lifted. Are they continuing to use my unspent money?. I hope so. I doubt I’ll try it again. I got no communication from them this entire time.

I do get “some” readership from my facebook friends to my blog, but my best numbers come from StumbleUpon.

The value of Facebook is heavily depended on the total number of users. And the free services to users make them get used to use Facebook as the primary tool to interact with others. It is hard for marketers to start effective marketing campaigns via Facebook without paying sufficient fees. The changes made by Facebook are definitely thoughtful to combine making users happy and boosting advertising revenues.